President-elect Donald J. Trump has tapped Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota to run the Interior Department, leading the new administration’s plans to open federal lands and waters to oil and gas drilling.
Governor Burgum, 68, has longstanding ties to fossil fuel companies and acted as a liaison between the Trump campaign and the oil executives who have donated heavily to it. The governor is particularly close to Harold G. Hamm, the billionaire founder and chairman of Continental Resources, one of the country’s largest independent oil companies, who has donated nearly $5 million to Mr. Trump since 2023.
The governor and Mr. Hamm have been working on Mr. Trump’s transition, according to several people close to the process who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to discuss the details.
Mr. Trump made the announcement during a gala for the America First Policy Institute that was held Thursday evening at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Mr. Burgum was in attendance.
“I won’t tell you his name — it might be something like Burgum,” Mr. Trump teased. He told the crowd he would make the formal announcement on Friday before saying, “Actually, he’s going to head the Department of Interior, and he’s going to be fantastic.”
The Interior Department manages about 500 million acres of public lands and vast coastal waters. Its agencies lease many of those acres for oil and gas drilling as well as wind and solar farms. It oversees the country’s national parks and wildlife refuges, protects threatened and endangered species, reclaims abandoned mine sites, oversees the government’s relationship with the nation’s 574 federally recognized tribes, and provides scientific data about the effects of climate change.
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